Wingnut Wings 1/32 Gotha G.lV LVG. September 1917
By Ernie Ling
Here are some pictures of my latest build, the incomparable Wingnut Wings Gotha G.IV. They were taken in my backyard on a base of trampled grass mat and dirt.
This kit was started almost two years ago, then ended up on the Shelf of Doom when the Vietnam Group Build started. It was rescued about 6 months ago and building started in earnest.
The figures are a cobbled together threesome, the rear gunner being a Model Cellar figure and the other two slip my mind at this time.
There have been plenty of questions floated my way as to the buildability of this kit, and all I can say is that is a Wingnut kit in every way. It almost snaps together. You need 3 feet of space for the wingspan, but it really isn't that long in the fuselage. If you have space for a Tamiya F-4, you have space for this plane.
I highly, highly, highly recommend this kit if you want something impressive yet different.
The timeline of these pictures places this aircraft around September 1917. At this time, this airplane is about a year old, and it has less than 2 months to live, because on the night of 10-11 November 1917, this machine crashed headlong into an unlucky Belgian farmhouse.
Fatalities are unknown, however it is known that at least one of the three crew survived because he was involved in another Gotha crash in 1918, when this time, his Gotha was shot down over England. He was made a P.O.W. for the remainder of the war.
Gothas were very hard to shoot down by aircraft alone, because they flew very high (12-15,000 ft), and they generally needed to be disabled by flak first, to slow them down and bring them low enough for fighters to catch them. Even then, they were very well defended by machine guns and despite their size, were quite agile.
© Ernie Ling 2015
This article was published on Thursday, October 01 2015; Last modified on Thursday, October 01 2015